>>5539849Your return home to resolve these matters carnal and kingly is unfortunately delayed by the OTHER matter-that of the elemental. You got cocky, you now realize. You overestimated your ability to cow the storm-spirit by Fearsome Presence alone. To subjugate and tame such a being requires a firmer hand, or perhaps a better incentive. Whichever approach you take, one thing is certain: you are not done with it yet!
“The lightning elemental is too useful a tool to lose without a fight,” you announce. “The Novice’s experiment, ‘Junior’, will track the thing with its sense of smell and its psionic ability.
“We will be fighting it, then?” your Archer asks, not without trepidation. “It is a mighty thing, Superior One, and my arrows… Well, I have a few made with orichalcum which might harm it in some way, but most will be useless.”
“Fire-lizards will resist its zap-scorch, but can’t killfight back,” Ivno the Kobold muses. “Basilisk… Can’t stone-freeze that. No body.”
“We could try to distract it,” the Novice suggests with muted enthusiasm, still clearly dwelling on your earlier conversation. “I know some demon-binding techniques after our lessons, of course, and even before then… But it isn’t my specialty, and elemental spirits are different.”
“I know a few Southern rituals that could help weaken it for binding,” Olu the Archer suggests.
The Novice snorts, then seems to pause in her mockery and shrugs.
“Why not?” she says, uncharacteristically generous. “A half-human Degenerate doing magic… We have seen stranger things.”
Olu merely inclines his head graciously to the Holy One who has given him this faintest of praise. It’s a reminder of the ancestral attitudes towards mixed-blood and casteless Reptilians which will soon rally against your ascent… But the Novice’s modicum of open-mindedness at least gives you some hope.
What will you do?
>Attempt the attack, distract and bind the elemental by magical means with your allies’ assistance>An all-out combat is a better bet, you feel, using your magic to duel the dangerous spirit and defeat it>There’s no need for violence and coercion—not yet, not when diplomacy ahsn’t been tried [what will you offer?]>Defiance must not be tolerated—you will hunt down this spirit and, with your recently-mastered shoggoth sword, you will slay it and absorb its power to further augment the blade>Write-in 